Archive for May, 2008

One of my main interests revolve around Business intelligence whose purpose is to support better business decision making. This requires the expertise of Data mining, which is the process of sorting through large amounts of data and picking out relevant information. Expert systems rely technologically on artificial intelligence for retrieving relevant information whenever the need arises.

For Example lets talk about Search, how each visitor’s search is recorded to provide relevant Ads to support the search company’s revenue. From irritating visual ads to adwords save the bandwidth of majority of users who access the internet from dial-up connections.

Have you noticed with Search engines, how information is not really Filtered? and you have to put in your efforts to try different combinations, avoid articles like “at” & “the”, etc.

When i did a search for ‘interaction design’ i got a whole lotta pages, which seemed to go on and on. Out of curiosity, when i clicked on the 22nd and 23rd pages, i came across redundant listings…. Spider-bots crawling for information is one aspect but how do the search engines sort such massive amounts of information?

Why can’t Search Engines categorise information? For example: when i search for ‘interaction design’, the results could be categorised under categories as Books (probably listings from sites like amazon), Blogs, Schools which have Interaction design in their course curriculum, Wikipedia or similar sites that explain the meaning, and of course groups and assocations like ixda.org and more….

Imagine a Search Engine so effective that would save time and increase the effciency and productivity of work? An intelligent one…. are any martians listening?

Check it: An OK/Cancel exclusive. We present to you “We Got It”, a song for the users. Representing our HCI, Usability, and Interaction Design brethren. Music and lyrics by our very own Tom Chi with vocals by Tom Chi and KC.

LYRICS

Yo — this is an OK/Cancel exclusive
for the first time in history: HCI and hiphop together.
for your educational pleasure
now check this while I wreck with some buttons and levers
give me 10 seconds and I’ll start this endeavor

HCI? yo we got it
UCD? yo we got it
focus on usability, yeh we’re on it
champion the user to keep the work honest
that’s the task that’s upon us
that’s the task that’s upon us

So you say got an application to build
Market niche you going to fill with a product that’s a killer
You got ‘funding in the millions and a team that is willing
to follow any schedule that you set before them

But wait a sec here, I don’t see any HCI,
Man you’re headed for more drama than “Days of ‘our Lives”
you’re gonna end up with something that users despise
lest you get their feedback throughout the project timeline

So sit down — and listen to me
No one wants see their product become ancient history
Before you start rushing to build those interfaces
your best bet is make a set :: of simple use cases

They should describe what users actually do
and if that’s unknown, run a contextual inquiry too
Because your interface will never be easy to follow
lest you build it to match up with their cognitive models

After that generate a lot of designs
run them by some users even just 2 at a time
iterate and iterate and soon you’ll oblitherate
any interfaces which are wack or inconsiderate

that will help you mitigate support costs or generate
website hit rates and orders. So check it:
you’ll be taking profits instead of mounting losses
‘Cause you brought us in at-the front of the process

HCI? yo we got it
UCD? yo we got it
focus on usability, yeh we’re on it
champion the user to keep the work honest
that’s the task that’s upon us
that’s the task that’s upon us

So you’re just starting out, and want to know more?
design of everyday things will help you get through the door
and it takes less than 7 seconds, if your logged on
to scope an alertbox over at useit.com

now peruse on over to Shneiderman and Cooper
along with Steve Krug they stop interface bloopers
and when you got to check where the user’s head is at
best pick up a copy of Beyer and Holtzblatt

perhaps you’re a coder needing HCI bad? we got
peeps that speak your language, like Spolsky and Winograd
and lastly if you’re asking to see the larger picture
read Rosenfeld and Morville, and have Tufte chart it later

HCI? yo we got it
UCD? yo we got it
focus on usability, yeh we’re on it
champion the user to keep the work honest
that’s the task that’s upon us
that’s the task that’s upon us

HCI? yo we got it
UCD? yo we got it
focus on usability, yeh we’re on it
champion the user to keep the work honest
that’s the task that’s upon us
that’s the task that’s upon us

Alright, that will get ya’ll started.
Shout out to Snoop Toggy Togg, Eazy Z, LL Spool J, and other headz i didn’t get to mention here.

Userati unite – to keep the interactions clear. nice.
yo ima pass this over to KC now, check this out

Yo this KC in the UK
bringing usability from London to Van-city
if your ‘project goes pear-shaped then come get me
or perhaps that geezer the brilliant Tom Chi
all lightweights, clear out right
ok-cancel is here now

Many people are not open to change they resist it. People tend to get comfortable at their workspace. So when there is change, how do they react?

How have people really reacted to the Office Ribbon bar?

This reminds me of the time when I was comparing the office 2003 with macromedia (then) adobe (now) flash interface in 2005 with a friend. We opened all the toolbars of office and noticed how they took up half the screen, I guess we weren’t the only ones to notice it 😛 We notice how neatly the Flash interface had provision to make certain parts visible and their accessibility.

I was working on an interface which had the navigation on the right, yes, that’s right the main navigation on the right side for the user (Fitts’ law is a model of human movement which predicts the time required to rapidly move to a target area, as a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target.), to make it easily accessible to the user. There was lots resistance to use it in my workplace but when macromedia (then, Adobe now) came out with Breeze with the navigation on the right, they were open to implementation of the interface on the right.

Now, Web 2.0 (example blogs) have their primary navigation on the right.